I am like 99% sure you are wrong but I’ll eat my words if you can show me a country’s building codes that say concrete/brick/whatever is required between homes with shared walls.
I believe that in my country shared walls need to be at least REI60 rated (DIN EN 13501-2). REI60 means the load bearing, integrity and thermal resistance hold up for at least 60 minutes during a fire. This almost always means brick walls. I think even if your house is within x amount of meters from another house it also needs to be REI60.
It doesn’t have a strict “X mm” norms but reglaments a noice propagation. Of course it would take some calculation to translate it into millimeters of brick or concrete, but obviously ultra-thin bullet-penetrable walls won’t fit into this standard.
Noise insulation can easily be done without brick/concrete. In fact the normal way is without brick/concrete. These two things are not the same at all.
I’ll trust your translation but now I will ask that you trust that I’m an AV engineer because I don’t want to actually do the math.
A concrete or brick wall would have to be twice as thick as a properly-treated wood frame wall for the same acoustic isolation. It would cost 2-3x as much, too, not included drilling for conduit/wires.
Ok, you must be trolling because concrete and brick have TERRIBLE thermal resistance. The same acoustic materials used in a wood wall give it like 20x the insulation.
And if you are not trolling, you should learn more about a subject before speaking on it next time. The claims you are making aren’t true
I think that depends on whether it’s solid brick or this kind of brick.
Were I live (Portugal) houses tend to be made from the latter kind of brick.
That said, even the latter kind of brick doesn’t provide as good insulation as double walls, either air gapped or (even better) with insulating foam in between, and I’ve only ever seen that used for external walls, mainly in colder (further to the North) countries in Europe.
What materials are preferred heavily depends on the local climate, too! Those bricks probably work great for the sweet spot Portugal is in for weather. They’d be very bad up here in the Midwest US, thermal mass works against you when it’s below freezing out.
I’ve done a lot of what probably sounds like brick slander here but I’m not a hater, my dream home would have a brick exterior with a wood frame interior. I’ve just worked in a construction-adjacent industry for a long time and wanted to dispel the misinformation this guy is peddling
They’re not wrong though. You might be thinking thermal resistance as in “can hold a blowtorch to it” in which case sure, bricks might win, but that’s not the context here.
R-value measures how quickly heat transfers from one side of an object to the other, a higher number means it insulates better, or resists thermal transfer.
A 4" brick has an R value under one. It’s like 0.8 or so. 1" thick plywood is already better at 1.25 or so. I think the OSB used as sheathing on the outside of wood frame houses is higher still but could be wrong there. Bricks objectively have worse numbers here
Yeah, for good termal resistance with brick you need double walls with a gap in the middle (with air is good, with thermal insulating foam is better).
That said, I (in Europe) have never seen double walls used for internal walls.
PS: Actually I just remembered that in some places the kind of brick used is not solid but actually hollow - for example and one of the differences from this to the solid kind is exactly that these have better acoustic and thermal insulation.
Wood and plasterboard is still a poor insulator compared to actual insulation materials (they’re around 0.035-0.038, with exception of PIR), but still much better than both brick and solid concrete.
Americans deserve shit for a lot that’s going on right now, but the “they build houses out of cardboard and sticks” thing has never been exclusive to America. Also, there are plenty of drawbacks to building houses out of bricks and concrete.
You are correct but the stereotype has a point - something like 90% of houses in the US have wood frames. What’s wrong about the stereotype is the implication that wood framing is outright worse than brick as you alluded.
The two biggest factors are speed and cost. Unlike most of the world, the US expanded wide and fast. And also unlike most of the world, the US has an insane amount of forest (even more before colonization). Wood framing has come a long way since then and a well-built house is incredibly strong.
Europe had to build out housing extremely fast after WWII, because whole cities were practically demolished by bombings.
Cities built huge blocks of apartment towers, typically from prefabricated concrete panels. These were made in a factory, trucked to the building site, and assembled into 4-20 story towers (8-10 the most typical).
The apartments are small, and typically have district heating and no AC. These buildings provided housing for lower income or middle class families, depending on the area, from Spain to Russia. In America, the closest equivalent are the projects.
The concrete walls don’t make for very comfortable living spaces. Sound travels between apartments, walls between rooms are frequently drywall. It’s a bitch to drill into if you want to hang anything. District heating means too hot inside when it’s on, and you can’t turn it on or off when you want it.
Some are slums, some are decent. It’s not irrelevant, because you specifically said the US housing is unique because it was built fast. America was not built out in a rush in 10 years while millions were without homes, it was populated gradually over 4-5 centuries. That is a long time compared to the average lifespan of a house. The availability of lumber is a much bigger factor than speed.
I also said “wide” in that same sentence. You are comparing mass housing in a small area to single family homes spread across a large area and the stereotype comes from single family homes.
The US has plenty of multifamily buildings made with prefabbed concrete, they’re just in densely-populated areas
District heating means too hot inside when it’s on, and you can’t turn it on or off when you want it.
This is just plain incorrect. Every single radiator in apartmentswjrh district heating have individual thermostats on them that control the flow through it, which directly impacts the temperature in the room and can be turned off entirely if you want.
After a while, many buildings were retrofitted with thermostats. I know from experience that in Eastern Europe until the late 90s, there were valves but no thermostats, and radiators were effectively serially connected, so if you shut a valve, everything downstream was shut off too. Some units were always hot and people were growing tropical plants and had their windows open the whole heating season. Other units were miserably cold, depending on where they were within the building.
They really aren’t unless it’s a solid brick/concrete internal wall.
Even Americans, who are surrounded by guns, do not understand just how much a bullet can go through. I don’t expect people who aren’t exposed to guns every day to know.
About 15 years ago, my Minecraft server admin lived in Columbus Ohio, and a stray bullet from a car chase went through his car door and went through his abdomen and seat, and almost went through the opposing door.
My grandparents had a bullet go completely through their house, both exterior walls, and 3 interior walls, before the bullet got lodged in the brick wall of the church across the street.
I myself have attended events that demonstrated the penetration power of pistols, rifles, and shotguns.
Protip for anyone who wants to have something for home decence but is concerned about neighbors, use a shotgun with either target shot or birdshot. Drywall won’t stop it, but it will seriously limit the damage it does to anything on the other side of the wall.
Thank you. I thought I was going to have to explain how effective most calibers are at penetrating most materials, but you’ve done a wonderful job so now I don’t have to! Even people who own firearms are kinda clueless about it. I’ve seen people recommend pistols as home defense weapons because it’s not going to penetrate as much, not realizing that even 9mm is going through multiple walls. Fuck, on a car just about every common caliber except for .22 LR is going through every part of the vehicle except the engine block.
In normal countries inter-flat walls are thick enough to easily stop a bullet.
I am like 99% sure you are wrong but I’ll eat my words if you can show me a country’s building codes that say concrete/brick/whatever is required between homes with shared walls.
I think every country has both.
I believe that in my country shared walls need to be at least REI60 rated (DIN EN 13501-2). REI60 means the load bearing, integrity and thermal resistance hold up for at least 60 minutes during a fire. This almost always means brick walls. I think even if your house is within x amount of meters from another house it also needs to be REI60.
It may almost always mean brick walls but all of that can be accomplished with wood framing as well.
Lots of apartments have thin walls, houses not so much. But yeah we mostly don’t buy guns here.
https://e-construction.gov.ua/laws_detail/3083626778627933844?doc_type=2
It doesn’t have a strict “X mm” norms but reglaments a noice propagation. Of course it would take some calculation to translate it into millimeters of brick or concrete, but obviously ultra-thin bullet-penetrable walls won’t fit into this standard.
Noise insulation can easily be done without brick/concrete. In fact the normal way is without brick/concrete. These two things are not the same at all.
I’ll trust your translation but now I will ask that you trust that I’m an AV engineer because I don’t want to actually do the math.
A concrete or brick wall would have to be twice as thick as a properly-treated wood frame wall for the same acoustic isolation. It would cost 2-3x as much, too, not included drilling for conduit/wires.
Yes. It would cost a few times more. And it will stand for x100 times longer. And it has good thermal insulation. And a bullet insulation too :)
Ok, you must be trolling because concrete and brick have TERRIBLE thermal resistance. The same acoustic materials used in a wood wall give it like 20x the insulation.
And if you are not trolling, you should learn more about a subject before speaking on it next time. The claims you are making aren’t true
That is the most stupid thought I heard on Internet for the whole week.
I think that depends on whether it’s solid brick or this kind of brick.
Were I live (Portugal) houses tend to be made from the latter kind of brick.
That said, even the latter kind of brick doesn’t provide as good insulation as double walls, either air gapped or (even better) with insulating foam in between, and I’ve only ever seen that used for external walls, mainly in colder (further to the North) countries in Europe.
What materials are preferred heavily depends on the local climate, too! Those bricks probably work great for the sweet spot Portugal is in for weather. They’d be very bad up here in the Midwest US, thermal mass works against you when it’s below freezing out.
I’ve done a lot of what probably sounds like brick slander here but I’m not a hater, my dream home would have a brick exterior with a wood frame interior. I’ve just worked in a construction-adjacent industry for a long time and wanted to dispel the misinformation this guy is peddling
They’re not wrong though. You might be thinking thermal resistance as in “can hold a blowtorch to it” in which case sure, bricks might win, but that’s not the context here.
R-value measures how quickly heat transfers from one side of an object to the other, a higher number means it insulates better, or resists thermal transfer.
A 4" brick has an R value under one. It’s like 0.8 or so. 1" thick plywood is already better at 1.25 or so. I think the OSB used as sheathing on the outside of wood frame houses is higher still but could be wrong there. Bricks objectively have worse numbers here
Yeah, for good termal resistance with brick you need double walls with a gap in the middle (with air is good, with thermal insulating foam is better).
That said, I (in Europe) have never seen double walls used for internal walls.
PS: Actually I just remembered that in some places the kind of brick used is not solid but actually hollow - for example and one of the differences from this to the solid kind is exactly that these have better acoustic and thermal insulation.
No bricks and concrete have high thermal mass, but they have fairly high lamda values making them very poor insulators
Bricks: 0.84
Concrete (dense): 1.4
Hardwood timber: ~0.15
Woodfibre board: 0.11
Plasterboard: 0.16
source
Wood and plasterboard is still a poor insulator compared to actual insulation materials (they’re around 0.035-0.038, with exception of PIR), but still much better than both brick and solid concrete.
Would you mind checking the R value of brick for me? And while you’re at it, check what an insulated wood wall’s is?
Brick and concrete have high thermal MASS, not resistance.
Again, please learn more about a subject before you speak so confidently on it. You could have looked it up real quick before posting
Bricks do have terrible thermal insulation. You are probably confusing thermal mass for thermal insulation.
Americans deserve shit for a lot that’s going on right now, but the “they build houses out of cardboard and sticks” thing has never been exclusive to America. Also, there are plenty of drawbacks to building houses out of bricks and concrete.
You are correct but the stereotype has a point - something like 90% of houses in the US have wood frames. What’s wrong about the stereotype is the implication that wood framing is outright worse than brick as you alluded.
The two biggest factors are speed and cost. Unlike most of the world, the US expanded wide and fast. And also unlike most of the world, the US has an insane amount of forest (even more before colonization). Wood framing has come a long way since then and a well-built house is incredibly strong.
Europe had to build out housing extremely fast after WWII, because whole cities were practically demolished by bombings. Cities built huge blocks of apartment towers, typically from prefabricated concrete panels. These were made in a factory, trucked to the building site, and assembled into 4-20 story towers (8-10 the most typical).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large-panel-system_building
The apartments are small, and typically have district heating and no AC. These buildings provided housing for lower income or middle class families, depending on the area, from Spain to Russia. In America, the closest equivalent are the projects. The concrete walls don’t make for very comfortable living spaces. Sound travels between apartments, walls between rooms are frequently drywall. It’s a bitch to drill into if you want to hang anything. District heating means too hot inside when it’s on, and you can’t turn it on or off when you want it.
deleted by creator
That’s not really relevant though, is it? The US expansion was wide, they weren’t trying to house a bunch of people in an existing city.
And like it says, those are basically slums.
Some are slums, some are decent. It’s not irrelevant, because you specifically said the US housing is unique because it was built fast. America was not built out in a rush in 10 years while millions were without homes, it was populated gradually over 4-5 centuries. That is a long time compared to the average lifespan of a house. The availability of lumber is a much bigger factor than speed.
I also said “wide” in that same sentence. You are comparing mass housing in a small area to single family homes spread across a large area and the stereotype comes from single family homes.
The US has plenty of multifamily buildings made with prefabbed concrete, they’re just in densely-populated areas
This is just plain incorrect. Every single radiator in apartmentswjrh district heating have individual thermostats on them that control the flow through it, which directly impacts the temperature in the room and can be turned off entirely if you want.
After a while, many buildings were retrofitted with thermostats. I know from experience that in Eastern Europe until the late 90s, there were valves but no thermostats, and radiators were effectively serially connected, so if you shut a valve, everything downstream was shut off too. Some units were always hot and people were growing tropical plants and had their windows open the whole heating season. Other units were miserably cold, depending on where they were within the building.
Fair enough, bimetal thermostats on parallel lines were standard in at least the 60’s here.
Are they though? I seriously doubt that.
They really aren’t unless it’s a solid brick/concrete internal wall.
Even Americans, who are surrounded by guns, do not understand just how much a bullet can go through. I don’t expect people who aren’t exposed to guns every day to know.
About 15 years ago, my Minecraft server admin lived in Columbus Ohio, and a stray bullet from a car chase went through his car door and went through his abdomen and seat, and almost went through the opposing door.
My grandparents had a bullet go completely through their house, both exterior walls, and 3 interior walls, before the bullet got lodged in the brick wall of the church across the street.
I myself have attended events that demonstrated the penetration power of pistols, rifles, and shotguns.
Protip for anyone who wants to have something for home decence but is concerned about neighbors, use a shotgun with either target shot or birdshot. Drywall won’t stop it, but it will seriously limit the damage it does to anything on the other side of the wall.
Thank you. I thought I was going to have to explain how effective most calibers are at penetrating most materials, but you’ve done a wonderful job so now I don’t have to! Even people who own firearms are kinda clueless about it. I’ve seen people recommend pistols as home defense weapons because it’s not going to penetrate as much, not realizing that even 9mm is going through multiple walls. Fuck, on a car just about every common caliber except for .22 LR is going through every part of the vehicle except the engine block.